Monday 5 October: GPs have worked through this crisis, often at personal cost to themselves

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/10/04/lettersgps-have-worked-crisis-often-personal-cost/

605 thoughts on “Monday 5 October: GPs have worked through this crisis, often at personal cost to themselves”

  1. Morning GG and all.
    Woke up thinking how to make a better model for a COVID chart.
    Posted yesterday.

      1. Beautifully sung with no instrumental accompaniment to get in the way.
        Deller had fantastic voice.

          1. He was the first countertenor anyone ever listened to.
            He more or less resurrected the countertenor range singlehandedly.

          2. Well, yes, I suppose you’re right. We weren’t around for Farinelli (Carlo Broschi), Bernardi (Senesino) or Pellegrini 🙂

    2. Good morning.
      None here so far either and I’m still surprised by the total lack of the expected rain yesterday.

      T’Lad came over to pick up a BMW he’s bought off a mate. We loaded it into the van and I drove it to his place in Derby for him.
      In return he gave me a hand doing a couple of presses of apples to get a demijohn & couple of bottles full.

    2. Completely fascinating Geoff. We listened to it yesterday and it is heartening to know that, somewhere, moves are afoot to prove beyond doubt what a scam this whole Covid 19 thing has been.

      I understand that the NHS and the Army are to be involved in distributing the vaccine, when it comes, and that the government are “planning to counter the anti-vaxxers” with no doubt saturation advertising all over again. If that doesn’t suggest to the sheeple that something funny is going on nothing will.

      Good morning btw. Sun struggling to make an appearance just now.

    3. Morning all.
      Half way through it now, this needs to be recorded for world wide distribution. Before it’s deleted by the ‘THEY’.

    4. 324315+ up ticks,
      Morning GG,
      Looks suspiciously like the top germin lawyer I put up yesterday who has me warming to germins since they bombed our chip shop.

      2. To bring about a successful prosecution you need to have a judge (or bench) that is/are not complicit with the worldwide scam. Where do you think you will find such people?

  5. 324315+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Plus to cap it all we have the revealing of the dealing coming shortly, also the only good news is priti is going to give the illegal entry artist a good coat of looking at.

    If this political mad hatters strategy comes to pass will they expect the squaddie to be compliant in some form of compulsory needlework ?

    Do squaddies have parents / grandparents ?

    What is the real purpose of the illegal Dover intake, are those coming in
    beholding to the governance party that overseen their entrance ?

  6. Jenrick calls for UK ‘togetherness’ as PM admits public fury over Covid. 4 October 2020.

    Britain must return to a spirit of “national togetherness” and grassroots volunteering, the communities secretary has said, as Boris Johnson admitted the public was furious at the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Amid growing frustration and confusion over local lockdowns and a widening north-south divide, Robert Jenrick said energising community help for the most vulnerable during the second wave of coronavirus was a matter of “the greatest concern”.

    I’m not going to make a pretence of speaking for anyone else here. We are all old enough on NoTTL to make our own decisions. I’m not going to get together with any UK government over anything. As far as I’m concerned they are all traitors and only a fool would listen to their blandishments!

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/04/robert-jenrick-calls-for-national-togetherness-in-covid-second-wave

  7. Morning all

    SIR – You have published a lot of letters written by doctors in recent months.

    Is this because they have more time on their hands?

    Clive Hilton

    Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire

  8. ‘Morning again.

    Today’s DT Leader. Better late than never, I suppose:

    The consequences of the “protect the NHS” mantra that accompanied the first stages of the pandemic response are increasingly apparent. The remote consultations offered by many GP surgeries are claimed to be evidence that they remain fully open and doctors insist they are working as effectively as ever. In many cases, their patients beg to disagree.

    But it is on waiting lists that the real problems are starting to be felt. The NHS cancelled thousands of routine treatments and minor surgeries to focus on Covid-19. These could not even be carried out in private hospitals, either, as many were contracted to the NHS to keep beds aside for a predicted flood of coronavirus patients.

    The knock-on effects of months of delays are now hitting home. Already more people are waiting longer than a year for treatment than at any time for a decade and this situation can only get worse. Furthermore, as we report today, millions of cases are to be reviewed and reprioritised in a process that will be grossly unfair to those who have been waiting for months or even years and who could end up at the back of the queue. One reason is because the condition of patients may have deteriorated due to delays during lockdown. But whose fault is that?

    We keep being assured that the NHS is open for business and people should not feel they cannot use it. Yet the evidence is of a system that has concentrated so much on Covid that many other conditions are simply going untreated, even though the long-term consequences will be far greater than contracting the virus. Staff have been told patients may be angry when told they have been “reprioritised”. They have every reason to be.

    Leading BTL, with which it is not difficult to agree!

    Jim Easton
    5 Oct 2020 7:19AM
    At last a recognition of just how serious this NHS failure is. They shut up shop, and never reopened. £134bn a year, and growing, for what? We need a massive management overhaul of this giant money sucking failing business. If the military did this Putin would be in no10. I love dearly all the medics in my family, but they too are in despair. As in commercial business its all about strategy, management and logistics. Some top down business re-engineering is required stripping out layers of management. If we want to go forward we must act to save the NHS from itself. Remember, it works for us, and we pay for it. We are entitled to have a service worthy of this nation. Get on with it…………..reform and renew.

    1. Get real. How many of us expect it to ‘reform and renew’?

      The commentariat will not allow any significant changes to the NHS unless buckets more money are thrown at it.

      1. And when they do get more money, they still won’t allow any significant changes.

        1. It would be spent on the latest politically socially-engineering government initiatives.

          1. Not to mention expanding the huge number of languages their leaflets are translated into. Translation and interpreting don’t come cheap.

    2. Robert Harris’s recent book “The Second Sleep” describes an imaginary England nearly 1000 years after an Armageddon event in the early 21st Century. The Church has exercised Dictatorial powers over the survivors. It is a good read but not exactly a happy one.

      1. Interesting, clydesider. I have enjoyed Robert Harris’s books in the past and might give this one a try.

        1. ‘An Officer and A Spy’ [The Dreyfus Affair] was one of the best novels I’ve ever read. ‘Munich’ was I thought far too kind to Chamberlain.

      2. Interesting, clydesider. I have enjoyed Robert Harris’s books in the past and might give this one a try.

  10. A right to die

    SIR – You report (October 1) that Prof Paul Cosford, former medical director of Public Health England, has backed assisted dying after developing incurable lung cancer, and describes the current law as “inhumane”.

    He “never wanted to be a supporter of changing the law in favour of assisted dying”, but now calls on the Government to understand why “rational, law-abiding people sometimes feel compelled to travel to Switzerland”. His intervention has come after some MPs suggested the law could be changed within four years.

    Surely in these days of freedom of choice, terminally ill people should have the right to choose a medically assisted death, just as pregnant women can choose a natural birth or a pain‑free epidural. Most people don’t want their loved ones to see them suffering, because they want them to have happier memories.

    Ann Wills

    Ruislip, Middlesex

    1. It all sounds so simple but look at the Abortion Laws. They have not led to the removal of suffering but the mass murder of innocents!

        1. Morning Bob. I am actually sympathetic to the idea of assisted dying for those of us who choose it, but experience teaches us that where the poisonous influence of Westminster reaches lies disappointment and betrayal.

          2. My feelings as well. Give the NHS a cheap way to “fix” hundreds of thousands of elderly sick patients, and watch it become the default “treatment” within a couple of yearsmonths!

          4. They will all have their own purpose-built euthanasia suite. No need for cattle trucks!

      2. This is exactly the point that so many people can’t or won’t see. The Abortion laws have never formally been changed – yet they have expanded to the point where doctors can openly abort a baby of the non-desired sex without fear of prosecution.

        In fact, in the light of medical advances since the 1960s, we should be looking at making the abortion limit earlier – but the pro-abortion lobby is so fanatical they won’t even have that.

        Anyone who thinks euthanasia wouldn’t go the same way is simple.

      3. When it came to indigenes with foreign wives or fiancées (the families of illegal migrants get a free pass thanks to human rights lawyers), they set the concept of “net contributor to society” meaning the sponsoring party had to have a minimum secure income of £18,000 a year. The think tank proposed making this £27,000, but it was lowered by the politicians.

        Now they have established this concept, surely the next step is euthanasia for indigenes who are not “net contributors to society”?

    1. So true. The other day we had an incomer complaining about ‘disease-ridden’ bats in the village. She was given short shrift by the real residents.

    3. Oh dear. Given away in picture 3 as the work of a townie. Does the cartoon writer think that there are only ewes in the fields at lambing time? On every sheep farm I’ve ever seen there are ewes in the fields every month of the year.

      July/August/September can be particularly noisy with bereft ewes at one side of the farm and newly speaned lambs at the other.

  13. From yesterday’s DT…this should have the BBC luvvies soiling their underwear!

    Exclusive: Sir Robbie Gibb emerges as a surprise frontrunner to be new BBC chairman.
    Theresa May’s ex-comms chief is seen as a favourite after Charles Moore made clear he would not be applying because of family reasons

    By
    Christopher Hope,
    CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    4 October 2020 • 9:00pm

    A former communications chief at 10 Downing Street has emerged as a surprise frontrunner to become the new chairman of the BBC, The Telegraph can disclose.

    Sir Robbie Gibb, who ran Number 10’s press team when Theresa May was Prime Minister, is seen as a favourite after Lord Moore of Etchingham – who as Charles Moore is a Daily Telegraph columnist – made clear he would not be applying because of family reasons.

    Other possible candidates include Trevor Phillips, 66, a former chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, and the vastly experienced Sir Peter Bazalgette, who is expected to step down from his role as ITV chairman in 2022 but could leave earlier.

    The new names are being touted amid suggestions that enthusiasm in Whitehall for one of three Tory former Tory Cabinet ministers – Baroness Morgan, Amber Rudd and George Osborne – has cooled amid concern they might not be radical enough if they were given the job.

    The appointment of a new chairman to replace Sir David Clementi when he stands down in February is a political one. Ministers are expected to publish the job advertisement in the next fortnight.

    Sir Robbie, a lifelong Brexiteer and former head of the BBC’s political programming, was being groomed by ministers for a non-executive position on the BBC’s board, to provide some support for Lord Moore had he accepted the role.

    However sources said that now Lord Moore had withdrawn from the process, the 55-year-old Conservative was now being encouraged to apply for the chairman’s position outright because of his unique knowledge of the workings of the BBC and Number 10.

    Sir Robbie, whose brother is Schools minister Nick Gibb, had been advising GB News, a new rolling channel launching early next year, but stood back from that position last week.

    One broadcasting source said: “He is a Tory, he has worked for the Government, he also knows broadcasting back to front as a BBC executive, and as he is a reformer, he realises the BBC will have to change, it can’t stay as it is.

    Sir Robbie would also be seen as a potential ally for Tim Davie, the new director general who has impressed ministers with his zeal for reform since he succeeded Lord Hall of Birkenhead last month.

    “If the Government wants to put somebody in to strengthen the director general’s hand with reforms, then he may be a sensible choice. He would be an ally of the DG,” the source said.

    “We know that when the DG and chairman are singing from the same song sheet they usually get their way.”

    Mr Phillips could be held back by his association with the Blair government two decades ago, although he has appealed to Conservatives for his strident criticism of multiculturalism.

    Mr Phillips was seen as “a very good choice” to chair the corporation, the source said, not least because it would help the corporation address complaints that it has a ‘snowy peaks’ syndrome”, with not enough black, Asian and minority ethnic senior executives.

    One broadcasting source described him as “a more visible and symbolic appointment”, adding: “Trevor is hugely intelligent; as a long background in broadcasting, a Blairite, but a very moderate, sensible character, he knows the BBC has to change as well.”

    Sir Peter, the veteran television executive and former chairman of the Arts Council, who has been chairman of ITV since May 2016, would fit the bill if ministers wanted a BBC chairman with the knowledge to help the corporation face head on the digital challenge from Netflix and Google.

    Sir Robbie, Mr Phillips and Sir Peter were unavailable for comment. The BBC declined to comment.

    2. “…enthusiasm in Whitehall for one of three Tory former Tory Cabinet ministers – Baroness Morgan, Amber Rudd and George Osborne – has cooled
      amid concern they might not be radical enough if they were given the job      “. Not to mention the fact that all 3 are alarmingly incompetent!

    3. Is he one of those wet Tories who is quite happy to conserve Blair’s legacy?
      This resumé of his career doesn’t fill me with confidence.

    4. “…enthusiasm in Whitehall for one of three Tory former Tory Cabinet ministers – Baroness Morgan, Amber Rudd and George Osborne – has cooled
      amid concern they might not be radical enough if they were given the job      “. Not to mention the fact that all 3 are alarmingly incompetent!

  14. Young people aren’t ‘snowflakes’, insists private school head

    Young people are not “snowflakes”, they are “remarkable” and have faced more challenges than any peacetime generation, according to a leading private school head.

    Sally-anne Huang, who has just taken over as the first female High Master of St Paul’s School in London, will address the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference today, and will say that what young people have gone through this year is “turning them into a remarkable and powerful generation”.

    Ms Huang will also say that rather than being perceived as an “ivory tower”, independent schools should be a “life raft” for liberal education and the development of sport and the arts.

    “Anyone who, like me, was with 18-year-olds in March when they suddenly learnt that not just their chance to prove themselves in exams, but also all those joyous rites of passage at the end of their school days had been taken from them – anyone who saw them pick themselves up, move on, adapt, they would not call them snowflakes,” she will tell the virtual conference. She will say there is a need to “deliver a curriculum that suits their needs, and continue to question what’s going on in our exam system and in our universities”.

    Let me get this right. Mizz Huang is a “High Master” yet she is addressing the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference? Three questions:

    1. Why is she not a “High Mistress”?

    2. Is it ‘cos “she’s” a trannie?

    3. If so, why isn’t the gig known as the “Head Teachers’ Conference”?

    And these clowns are put in charge of educating our ingenues!

    2. The “gig” is named as it is to distinguish the members, who are Heads of public schools, from hoi polloi called Head Teechers (sic) of yer state schools.

      1. I did not attend The Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School (nor their Girls’ School for that matter) but I do know the correct placement of their apostrophes.

      2. Good morning, Bill

        Does you MR refer to herself as a schoolmistress, a school teacher or just as a teacher>? I suppose I say that I was a schoolmaster because that’s what the chaps who tried to teach us were called when I was a pupil myself.

        Funnily enough the Head of Modern Languages at St Paul’s School was a student on one of our courses when our boys were little. She was a very sweet and intelligent girl who returned to us as an au pair to help us look after the monsters. I wonder how she will get on with the new Head?

        Women are certainly making their mark in traditional boys’ schools. The last Head of Blundell’s came to the school as a former ‘teacher’ from Marlborough and is now the Head of Cheltenham College.

  15. Good morning, all. Very late on parade. More bloody rain. Curses.

    No news again, I see. What new rules are there fr us to ignore?

  16. ‘Morning All

    Funny Old World

    The health authorities say they’ve found 16k missed tests.(down the back of the sofa??)

    However,the (low) reported numbers of hospitalisations and deaths for the
    corresponding period haven’t changed (i.e. been revised upwards).

    Good news then. The China flu must be less deadly than the MSM and
    authorities feared, so get rid of the lockdown and back to work folks!
    These people seek to treat us as idjits!!!!

    2. 324315+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      After especially the last three decades where would they get such a notion ?

      Bare witness, a large % of the peoples play the pro politico game of party first regardless of consequence.
      We could never have achieved such depths of odious crap without their input.

    3. They have even admitted that with better knowledge, 80% of people in intensive care survive now.

    4. The headlines are all about cases soaring, but there is no corresponding rise in hospitalisations or deaths. They think we’re idiots. Meanwhile Wales is contemplating quarantine and not letting any “international” (ie English) visitors in for holidays. Fine – I’ll keep my money at home. It’s going to be difficult using some of the roads in these parts (the Marches) because they go in and out of Wales like a fiddler’s elbow.

  17. Tutti Frutti for all

    Pope says coronavirus pandemic has proven that ‘magic theories’ of market capitalism have failed and world needs a new type of politics

    *Pope Francis outlined his vision for a post-Covid world in his latest encyclical
    *The Vatican Encyclicals are the most authoritative form of papal teaching
    *Pope Francis said the pandemic had made evident different countries’ inability to work together and cited global job losses as evidence change was needed.

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/10/04/13/33965980-0-image-a-24_1601813788316.jpg

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8803479/Pope-says-coronavirus-pandemic-proven-world-needs-new-type-politics.html#newcomment

      1. Good morning, mola

        Not that I disagree with you but what would happen to a Muslim if he or she said that a prominent imam or Mohammed was uttering bovine excrement?

    2. Conclusive [conclavic?] proof, if ever it were needed, that this clown is a Globalist puppet.

        1. Jorge Bergoglio is a heretic and a usurper.

          Benedictus XVI Papa est.

          (Good morning, BTW)

          8. One kills you because he likes killing, the other kills you for your own good and likes killing.

      2. It was said a long time ago that you couldn’t succeed in the Catholic Church in South America unless you were a Marxist. Can’t remember where I read that.

    3. I suspect that the pandemic has caused a serious drop in revenue for The Vatican Company Ltd.

    5. We could leave the outcome of the virus up to God, as he/she/it intended, and do away with all those pesky doctors. Would save a packet on pensions.

    1. We should allow no more mosques in England – which has an established church – than Saudi Arabia has churches.

      Surely Muslims can hardly complain if our country takes the same attitude to Muslims as Muslim countries take to Christians?

      Is it not both racist and patronising to say that we show them more consideration and respect than they show us because we are superior to them! Of course Muslims would say we do it because we have lost confidence in our own culture and are weak and ripe for the plucking.

      It is an outrage that we should be expected to give more consideration to other cultures and religions than they are prepared to show to ours.

      2. We have these things done to us because there are far too many idiots who think that virtue signalling and generosity will change the attitudes of people who have no interest whatsoever in changing their ways, and hate everything we stand for.

          2. Bought some time for a bit of rearmament. Don’t know if that was the plan, but…

          3. Maybe if we’d stood firm in the first place, building up our defences in double quick time might not have been necessary. It was, in the words of the Iron Duke the previous century, a damned close-run thing.

        2. We delude ourselves into thinking we are generous-spirited and civilised. The trouble is that the culture and religion of many of those who wish to destroy us think that we are weak and that the sooner they can subdue us the better.

      3. ‘Afternoon, Richard, I suggest that we (by law) remove all the mosques in the UK, until we have parity with the Christian churches in Saudi Arabia.

    2. Every where they go, they so much cause trouble.
      There’s was a church in Luton set alight many times that seemed to be a practice patch.

    3. This one in Ireland was actually a disused convent with planning permission to be converted into flats and offices, but bearing the burden of listed building conditions. It seems to be more the work of a rogue developer.

      1. 324315+ up ticks,
        Morning JM,
        Could very well be, I do admit to a bit of word association as in
        Church fire = muslim input, if at fault on this issue then I stand corrected.

      2. A Colchester special. The number of disused buildings with planning permission that spontaneously combusted went off the scale.
        One ex-NHS building near us went up in smoke twice in one week.

  20. Off to the dentist shortly.
    Just rang the receptionist to check my appointment and apologised for being one of those bluddy annoying old people….

        1. This tendency has improved as I have got older, though. I blame it on the fact that I was the only child of elderly parents.

    4. Just remember this, Plum,

      I Am An Old Fart
      I’m an old fart, I’m 70 years old,
      I live in the warm ‘cos I can’t stand the cold.
      Highly opinionated and cynical as well,
      I wish the EU and its Commissars to hell.

      My beloved England has gone down the pan;
      Nanny’s the one who says what you can
      And can’t do in living your life.
      My God! Her nagging is worse than a wife!

      Nanny’s spouse is a twit called Barroso
      Who also wants the very last say so.
      So “Pull up your socks; straighten your tie!”
      Live by the “Rules” ‘til the day that you die.

      If I wanna smoke, then that is my right;
      If I wanna drink, my right to get tight;
      If you wanna moan, then please carry on
      But don’t expect me to enjoy Nanny’s con.

      Reasons why I left England – 2014

  22. Good morning my friends,

    I’ll take ‘bonk’ over these words any day of the week
    The list of words that mean nothing to millennials is never-ending but there are plenty of modern ones I wish I’d never heard

    Shane Watson
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/take-bonk-words-day-week/

    Here is a comment displayed under the article:

    “I suppose that if Boris Johnson leaves office and is looking for achievements of which he can boast he can boast that he has reinvigorated the words ‘bonk’ and ‘buffoon’. Indeed those who enjoy using alliteration refer to him as Boris The Bonking Buffoon.”

    3. Boris The Bonking Buffoon
      Invented the Covid Spittoon
      Becoming Mayor was fair
      But PM with all that Hair?
      Let’s hope is gone quite soon….

      1. “Let’s hope is gone quite soon …”

        Be careful what you wish for. Better the buffoon you know.

          1. We need a clear out of all politicians, all advisors, all snivel serpents, all at the BBC (except for one, of course), all in education, all in the news media, all in the judiciary, all in the health service, and all in the police.

          2. Didn’t the French try that a while back and it all ended in tears when they caught the late arrivals at Waterloo?

      2. Boris The Bonking Buffoon
        Invented the Covid Spittoon
        He acted the fool
        And drank it as gruel
        And never recovered, the goon.

      3. Boris The Bonking Buffoon
        Invented the Covid Spittoon
        He acted the fool
        And drank it as gruel
        And never recovered, the goon.

    4. Can’t read it. It is behind the paywall and I’m not subscribing to the woke, Labour loving editor’s retirement fund.

    1. Tottenham scored 6 against Man U as well.
      But Man U only had ten men after Spurs hand bag boy Lamela went down after Martial touched his chin.

  26. Good morning all.

    Sawn-off service

    SIR – Lloyds Bank has sent me a cheque for £1, to encourage me to download an app that will allow me to pay it in online. Instead, I intend to take it to our post office and pay it in there.

    A follow-up email asked what I thought of Lloyds’ service. When I replied that the only way I would willingly pass the threshold of one of its branches was in a stocking mask, holding a sawn-off shotgun, I was disappointed not to receive a reply.

    Rod Beardsell
    Nantwich, Cheshire

    A few years ago I wanted to buy some extra Lloyd’s Bank shares at a small discount. The only way to pay for them was by mailing a cheque drawn on a single-named (not a joint) bank account. Yet banks (including Lloyd’s) have been working tirelessly to outlaw cheques as a form of payment.

    Last week my wife wanted to change one of her savings accounts from branch-based to on-line. One of the supporting documents she was asked to provide was a recent original paper bank statement from another bank. And all banks – and many other enterprises – are urging us to go paperless. Where will it end?

    1. You try registering Power of Attorney from abroad – without going into the branch!
      You MUST send an original utility bill, for example, but we don’t get utility bills, just (effectively) direct debit from bank account. The buggers then want all copies of documents notarised, but don’t recognise the Attorney’s stamp – it’s in Norwegian (Wow!) I can send them the original of a government document attesting to my residential address, but that’s in Weegie too, so they can’t cope with that, and they don’t like my translation (also notarised…).

  27. Military will help distribute Covid-19 vaccine, says Hancock.4 October 2020.

    The UK’s military will be involved in the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, Matt Hancock has told the virtual Conservative party conference.

    The health secretary also said the government was preparing a campaign to challenge the anti-vaccination movement for when a vaccine is rolled out.

    Asked about his hopes for a vaccine during an “interactive interview” with the anti-FGM campaigner Nimco Ali, he said it was “the great hope”, agreeing with Boris Johnson, who on Sunday morning told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show that the public could expect some “bumpy months” ahead.

    “The plans are in train, a combination of the NHS and the armed forces are involved in the logistics of making the [vaccine] rollout happen, because it’s not just about developing and testing the evaccine,” he said.

    Morning everyone. Here’s a man preparing for the distribution of a vaccine that; so far as is known, does not yet exist and simultaneously planning the campaign to convince everyone it is OK! A strange foreseeing! Now a possible explanation is that having embarked on this grande folie the entire Government has staked its hopes on this occurring much as the inhabitants of the Führerbunker did on the appearance of the wunderwaffe in 1945; and for much the same reasons. It is the only thing that can save their asses from the coming Götterdämmerung! It is of no small significance that there were no demurrals from this course within the Hitlerian hierarchy either. They all knew that they would hang together. As to the more possibly sinister reasons for this program the only way you want to take this is if they put a gun to your head, which is probably why the Army is involved.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/04/digital-hotcakes-15m-downloads-for-covid-19-app-says-matt-hancock

    1. Morning Minty et al.

      Are you absolutely certain that the Army isn’t being deployed to guard against the overwhelming crowds madding to get their vaccinations?

    3. BTL Comment from The Realslog:

      Bobby47 on October 4, 2020 at 4:44 pm
      When all those around you ain’t dropping down dead writhing in agony screaming, ‘damn this blasted Covid’ and even your 80 old granny, who still lives with her Mam and Dad, and they’re both happily running around kicking the tops off daisies because Covid didn’t kill them, then all you’ve got left to suppress the truth and support the great lie are statistics, graphs and words of fear. And that’s where we are now, and unless some other ailment is visited upon us by God who increasingly became pissed off with our species and we named it Dead In Twenty Minutes Of Agony, then there’s little more they can do to keep this madness going.
      Short of Marshall Law and shooting dissidents on sight I can’t for the life of me see where they can go from here. Happily for humanity and sadly for the peddlers of fear, we ain’t seen handcarts pushed about carrying away the dead, the Nightingale Hospitals have yet to greet a patient, ventilators are piled up in their tens of thousands that’ll never be used and the most susceptible demographic of our society who are more open to pointless bollocks, the young and easily impressionable, our kids, well they’ve come to the same conclusion as those who still retain an ability to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions.
      I know what bollocks is. I’ve peddled enough of it in my time to quickly spot it and being the purveyor and author of a great deal of it, namely undiluted pigswill and bollocks, I’m telling you this is all bollocks and anyone who thinks otherwise disagrees with me.

    4. Morning Minty (and all NoTTLers). At first I read your first line as “Minty will help distribute Covid-19 vaccine”. I think I need another cuppa!

    5. It could take a while to get round everyone. You will need a medic to load the syringe and a medic to inject the vaccine. You will also need two big strong soldiers to hold down the patient.

    1. Have mixed feelings here. On the one hand the honourable thing to do would be to resign, on the other it is pleasing to see SNP embarrassed! So maybe Ferrier could hang on a bit longer.

    2. If her electorate are happy to leave her in post as an Independent she is free to stay in post. She will almost certainly be taken to court and given a punishing sentence and perhaps some penalty from the HoC. Blackford can bully her but cannot force her to resign, it is her decision and she will have to learn to live with it.

      1. It will be interesting to see whether anyone comes forward claiming to have caught it from her, in the same way people came forward over Cummings’s little trips to say they saw him out and about.

    1. As most people who have been tested aren’t I’ll it means the herd immunity is working. The government imposes ridiculous rules to prevent herd immunity because if that happens they’ll have nothing to scare the living daylights out of people.

      As the RT-PCR tests are not specific it will test positive if you’ve had any coronavirus in the past few months and thst includes the common cold. Why people would take a test if they’re not ill is beyond belief.

      1. There is a man on You Tube called Ivor Cummins (I don’t think he is related to Dominic) – He has done some detailed and interesting analysis on all the numbers. I think a fellow Nottler may have posted the original link.

        1. I remember watching that and thought exactly the same. We’re in interesting times.

  30. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – For those who are resigning in disgust from the National Trust, as I did two years ago, the National Trust for Scotland might be of interest.

    It has reciprocal rights with the National Trust, and membership is slightly cheaper.

    Michael Clarke
    Gillingham, Dorset

    Not quite, Michael Clarke. Although the National Trust for Scotland provides free access and parking for NT members north of the border, the NT does not automatically provide free parking for NT for S members should they wish to visit NT properties south of the border. It is not, therefore, fully reciprocal.

    1. We have not resigned because we hope that one day this madness will be over – it is even more necessary to preserve what we have in these times. All the bs that we hear is just that – noise. I feel that the NT want the public to resign their membership so that they can claim disinterest and a lack of funding. This gives them the perfect excuse to sell off their holdings as no longer viable.

  31. Another humbling Obituary. What an astonishing chap. That he lived to 100 is nothing short of miraculous!

    Colonel John Waddy, survivor of Operation Market Garden who went on to lead the SAS – obituary

    He was wounded several times during the ill-fated attack on Arnhem, during which three-quarters of his battalion were killed or captured

    ByTelegraph Obituaries
    4 October 2020 • 4:33pm
    John Waddy

    Colonel John Waddy, who has died aged 100, was one of the last surviving British officers from the Battle of Arnhem; he later commanded the SAS.

    On September 18 1944, in the second lift of Operation Market Garden, 156 Parachute Battalion, part of Brigadier “Shan” Hackett’s 4th Parachute Brigade, embarked for Arnhem. The Brigade was tasked with capturing and holding the high ground to the north-west of the Dutch town, the aim of the operation being to establish a bridgehead over the Rhine.

    Low mist delayed their departure by several hours; surprise had been lost and the enemy alerted. The battalion commanders were warned to expect hard fighting but the violence of the German resistance came as a shock.

    Waddy, in command of “B” Company, recalled flying into anti-aircraft fire and seeing families perched on the roofs of their houses in areas flooded by the Germans. Hackett had suggested that he monitor the route, and he was looking out of the open door when the aircraft to his right was hit on the port wing.

    It caught fire and began a steep dive before exploding in a fireball when it hit the ground. Waddy looked at his men who were seated on each side of the aircraft but, with flak increasing, in the din they had not noticed what had happened. He said nothing.

    As they approached the Drop Zone on Ginkel Heath, flying at 700 ft, he could see the upturned faces of the German gun crews. Snipers were shooting at the doors of the Dakota aircraft as he jumped. On landing, he found that the battalion was missing about 60 men. It was an hour before 156 Para was on the move. They were eight miles from Arnhem and encountering growing opposition in the failing light.

    The following day, at 0700 hours, “B” Company’s first objective was to advance along the railway line to a point close to Oosterbeek railway station and to lay down covering fire to support “C” Company’s advance.

    After completing this mission, Waddy was ordered to attack the German blocking line – the Dreijensweg – along a track through the Johanna Hoeve woods. He was leading his company when they were held up by heavy Spandau fire.

    A self-propelled, double-barrelled flak gun was slamming high explosive shells into scrub where one of his platoons was trying to edge forward. It was taking heavy casualties from splinters.

    Waddy spotted the gun 150 yards ahead of him at the end of a ride. Taking a small group of men, he pushed through the undergrowth until he was within 15 yards of it.
    At that moment, the soldier on his right was hit in the forehead by a bullet and killed as he was about to throw a phosphorus grenade. Waddy saw a sniper in the tree above the gun. He fired five rounds with the only weapon he had, his .45 Colt, but missed. He was then hit in the groin.

    When he came to, he started to crawl away but the sniper fired again and the bullet hit the ground near his hand. He collapsed and pretended to be dead until a large Rhodesian private burst out of the bushes, picked him up and carried him 200 yards to the Company HQ.

    At the regimental aid post the doctor, Waddy said, must have thought that his patient was beyond help and “just chucked me his silver whisky flask”. In the field ambulance casualty post he was given a plasma transfusion and then wrapped in a parachute and taken by jeep to the Hotel Tafelberg at Oosterbeek which was being used as a dressing station.

    He was operated upon on the hotel’s billiard table and then moved to a house nearby. There he was wounded again when a mortar bomb scored a direct hit and killed six of the patients. After five days of attacks and counter-attacks, with a stream of casualties being brought in, the position was overrun.

    With the building on fire, Waddy, who had been wounded for a third time, was dragged out to a pile of 30 bodies in the back garden. When a sergeant carried him to a jeep, he thought reinforcements had arrived at last, but they were captured and he was taken to a German hospital at Apeldoorn. His battalion had suffered the highest casualty rate of any involved in the operation, with three-quarters of its men killed or captured.

    At Apeldoorn, he was fortunate not to have his foot amputated, an over-common remedy at a time when German battlefield surgery had lagged well behind best practice. An orderly, with heavy German humour, told him, “Never report sick with a headache.”

    When a Spitfire put a burst of cannon fire through the operating theatre, killing a British soldier and a German nurse, Waddy was upbraided by the matron for the RAF’s disregard for the Red Cross displayed on the roof.

    After having had a two-inch sliver of shell extracted, he was taken by hospital train to Stalag VIIA at Moosburg in Bavaria. He spent three months in the PoW camp hospital before being passed fit. The camp was liberated by the Americans at the end of April 1945.

    John Llewellyn Waddy was born near Taunton in Somerset on June 17 1920. The son of Colonel Richard Waddy DSO of the Somerset Light Infantry, and born into an Anglo-Irish military family, he was educated at Wellington before attending Sandhurst.

    He was commissioned into the Somerset Light Infantry in July 1939 and posted to India and the North West Frontier with the 1st Bn. In October 1941, he volunteered for 151 Parachute Bn and was appointed Intelligence Officer.

    Parachuting was in its infancy; there were no helmets in use, and while jumping through a hole in the floor of a Vickers Valentia biplane, he fractured his skull. It was three months before he recovered.

    His battalion was redesignated 156 Parachute Bn. He used to say of his men that they were “like my spaniels, brilliant in the field but a bloody nuisance out of it!” The battalion took part in the capture of the Italian port of Taranto in September 1943. The landing was unopposed but the advance northwards to Foggia was hampered by ambushes and roadblocks set up by retreating German forces.

    Between September 1945 and March 1948, Waddy served in Palestine on internal security duties, first at HQ 3 Para Brigade and then with 9 Para Bn. In 1947, while drinking in the bar, he was shot in the back and severely wounded. His assailant was thought to be a member of the Irgun paramilitary organisation. A brother officer was killed.

    After a spell in Athens, where he broke his jaw, he attended Staff College, followed by a posting to HQ 1st Infantry Division in Egypt and Libya. He then commanded a company of 1st Bn Somerset Light Infantry during the Emergency. Patrols in the Selangor jungle earned him a Mention in Despatches.

    Having volunteered to rejoin the Parachute Regiment, he was posted on exchange to the Airborne School at the Canadian Joint Air Training Centre, Manitoba. There he enjoyed undertaking Arctic exercises.

    A posting to Jordan and then Cyprus as second-in-command of 2 Para was followed by command of the Parachute Regiment’s Depot. He set up the Parachute Regiment Battle School at Brecon, which is now part of the School of Infantry. He was appointed OBE in 1962.

    In 1964, Waddy took up a newly created post as Colonel SAS, which has since evolved into that of Director Special Forces. He did much to develop new roles for the SAS in the post-colonial war period, and streamlined 22 SAS’s command structure.

    After brief stints on the Army liaison staff in Washington DC and Fort Benning Infantry School in Georgia, in 1970 he was posted as defence adviser to the British Embassy in Saigon, during the Vietnam War; helicopter patrols during the day were followed by cocktail parties in the evening. His experience led him to suggest more use of helicopter co-ordinated operations to the MoD, but this advice was only implemented 20 years later.

    He worked at the Joint Warfare Establishment in Wiltshire before retiring from the Army in 1974. For the next 15 years he was chief military adviser to Westland Helicopters, but in 1976 he took six months leave to advise on the film A Bridge Too Far directed by Richard Attenborough.

    He was responsible for training the extras who portrayed Lt Col (later Major General) John Frost’s men at Arnhem Bridge and, with his fellow consultants, he did his best to ensure that some parts of the American-produced film were historically accurate.

    Over the years, a bond of friendship developed between Waddy and the Dutch. Together with other veterans, he returned to Arnhem many times, and in 1982 he started leading staff college tours around the town, pointing out the errors made in the planning of Market Garden.

    Later he did the same for parties of Dutch and British children, and he wrote A Tour of the Arnhem Battlefields (1999).

    The last of seven generations of his family to hold a commission in the Army, to the end of his life he would have his gin and onions at lunchtime, a passion developed in India where the gin was undrinkable.

    John Waddy married, in 1945, Ann Davies, whom he had met the previous year at Melton Mowbray; his battalion had been billeted in the town and she had been working in the remount depot. She died in 2012. There were no children.

    John Waddy, born June 17 1920, died September 27 2020

      1. Indeed. I can’t decide whether he was amazingly lucky or amazingly unlucky, to get wounded so much and still survive!

    5. Crumbs. Like a character out of Boys’ Own.
      Shame they were childless; those genes deserved to be passed on.

        1. Possibly. But given what breeds and adds nothing worthwhile to the gene pool, it is still a shame that the Waddys didn’t pass on something more useful
          The west needs people like them.

          1. And the West needs fewer people like …

            Add the name of an Eastern country (or countries) of your choice!

      2. Indeed I did. The tears clouding my eyes precluded me from noticing that error.

        Now amended.

      3. There was a cartoon which showed a couple of chaps talking to each other and in the background of the picture there was a demonstration going on with people holding up banners with “Gay Pride” emblazoned upon them.

        One of the chaps in the foreground said: “Pride’s a Sin.”

      1. Morning, Harry.

        My guess is that someone pointed out the error in the tablet edition, which was easily remedied. Unfortunately it is not possible to rectify mistakes in the printed edition that is already on the newsagents’ counters and shoved through the letterboxes of the nation.

    4. Ouch. I was too busy cringing at the idea that Eliza Doolittle might have said “doncha know” – a phrase that appears to exist purely in the tiny minds of BBC script writers. I’ve never heard anyone actually say it except ironically.

    5. It passed the spell checker, what is the problem?

      Actually they would probably write “It past the spell chequer all right!”

      1. Ode to a Spell-checker

        Eye halve a spelling chequer
        It came with my pea sea
        It plainly marques four my revue
        Miss Steaks eye kin knot sea.
        Eye strike a key and type a word
        And weight four it two say
        Weather eye am wrong oar write
        It shows me strait a weigh.
        As soon as a mist ache is maid
        it nose bee fore two long
        And eye can put the error rite
        Its rarely ever wrong.
        Eye have run this poem threw it
        I am shore your pleased two no
        its letter perfect in it’s weigh
        my chequer tolled me sew.

      2. We feign agreeing, Keith, but this foreign poltergeist of a rule is neither efficient nor smart — and therein lies the height of the issue. It’s as if an ancient deity has deigned to influence the zeitgeist of the people. We must remove the weight of this veil from their eyes, and forfeit the obeisance of this weird and heinous rule from our science and leisure alike.

        1. “i before e, except after c”.

          Oh yeah? What about: abseil, albeit, ancient, atheism, beige, being, Beith, caffeine, capoeira, casein, Cassiopeia, cheiromancies, cleidoic, cleidomancies, codeine, concierge, counterfeit, cuneiform, deify, deign, deindustrialise, deity, disseize, dreidel, efficient, Eid, eider, eigenfrequencies, eight, Einsteinium, either, fancied, fancier, feign, feint, feisty, financier, foreign, forfeit,freight, geisha, glacier, glei, gneiss, greige, greisen, heifer, heigh-ho, height, heinous, heir, heist, herein, inveigh, inveigle, leisure, Leith, leitmotiv, lingerie, kaleidoscope, Keighley, keister, Keith, Madeira, Monteith, neigh, neighbour, Neil, neither, nonpareil, nuclei, obeisance, obeisancies, oneiromancies, onomatopoeia, peignoir, phenolphthalein, phthalein, policies, prescient, protein, Raleigh, Rheims, reign, reignite, rein, reveille, Rottweiler, science, seeing, seiche, seidel, Seine, seismic, seize, seizin, seizure, sheikh, Sheila, skein, sleigh, sleight, society, sovereign, specie, species, Stein, stupefacient, surfeit, surveillance, swingeing, teiid, their, veil, vein, weigh, weir, weird, zeitgeist.

          1. Most of those are words of foreign origin. How can they be expected to follow a rule for natives? 🙂

          2. Very few words in the OED have an ancient Briton heritage. The vast majority of words in our lexicon are imported.

    9. Harold Wilson was a classic example of a politician who dumbed down his accent. He spoke perfectly reasonable, standard RP when he was at Oxbridge, only to get down with the regionals once he went into Labour politics.

  34. “Thirty days has September,
    April, June and November.
    Most other months have more – that’s clear
    Like Black History Month, which lasts all year”

      2. BBC R4 schedule today is beyond a joke … whiteys are evil ….

        The pus filled syphilis infected anal sphincter of broadcasting. What it pumps out is even worse.

    2. I loath excel spreadsheets. The people creating them rarely seem to allow for the fact that someone might want to print out a hard copy. So many times I’ve tried and ended up with dozens of pages, some of them with just a few words or figures and the whole thing almost impossible to piece together.

      1. If you want a lot of data you simply can’t get it on one page unless you are prepared to use a magnifying glass. You don’t set them up to be easy to print, you set them up to do the job you need – then you sort out the printing (and it will vary from printer to printer anyway) afterwards. But it’s really very easy to tweak the page settings.

        Excel spreadsheets are easy to use and, contrary to the comment above, most of them don’t have errors (major or otherwise). But most of them are used for basic tasks. Whatever the system, the more complex the task the greater likelihood of errors. Excel is great for basics, for more complex stuff you need something better, or lots of check systems.

      2. Spreadsheets are completely beyond me. I’ve never had any tuition in making one and when I’ve tried to bumble my way into having a go, I get all flummoxed and give up!

        I’m a notepad and book kind of bloke! ☹️

        1. They’re just logical, that’s why I like them. If there is a mistake, I enjoy the detective work in finding where the error is.

          1. They might well be logical to you, but I have n experience of them whatsoever, therefore they remain a mystery, a puzzle and an enigma (all wrapped up in a conundrum) to me.

      3. I LOVE Excel. I’m never happier than fiddling with formulae and conditional formats and making graphs from the data.
        I do wish I knew more of the functions though – I haven’t yet grasped pivot tables for example.

        1. Then reach for the magnifying glass! Mind, I keep one in my handbag. A hangover from the days of wearing a contact lens. If it dropped out, I needed the magnifier to find the darn thing!

    3. It is very easy to make a mistake in excel and unless you have built in checks then errors often result. However, one of the main reasons for cock-ups in excel is using excel as database. This is because big organisations, like councils and universities do not want to pay the money to buy Access, the compatible Microsoft database. You also have to be aware of the edges, the capacity of your spreadsheet, and the capacity of your processor. Apparently the processor/spreadsheet version could not cope with the data and ignored it.
      I have seen excel spreadsheet with hundred of columns and thousands of rows. Cheap but insane.
      This is despite databases being the right way to do it, allowing quick and easy analysis and reporting, as well as extraction of the data to excel in order to perform calculations and create reports. That’s why databases were invented. Database – filing cabinet, spreadsheet – adding machine. I’m simple, really.

      1. I agree completely.

        In my day (and it might have improved now) one of the major problems was that it was far too easy for people to insert columns and rows, over-write formulae by mistake or post variables as fixed and vice-versa. That mistake could send false information into pricing models and produce some very bad results that did not appear wrong at first glance. Copy and paste could do similarly.

        A silly example:

        someone set up the year and then copied February’s 28 days as being the same day count for the next 10 months. It doesn’t sound like a significant error, but it subtracted almost a month’s worth of information. It was a cumulative problem and meant that the management and finacial accounts could not be reconciled properly and the discrepancy was getting worse and worse. It was stupid glitch that took quite a bit of finding.

        1. After I build a spreadsheet, I lock the fields that have equations in, and have whatever validation I can on the data. Colour the data entry fields differently to show that’s what they are for.

        2. After I build a spreadsheet, I lock the fields that have equations in, and have whatever validation I can on the data. Colour the data entry fields differently to show that’s what they are for.

          1. Locking is vital. It is surprising how easy it is for an accidental over-write, particularly when posting lots of new figures.

            I’m pleased that I no longer have to have anything to do with them.

            I’m sure the analytical tools are greatly improved from my day and if you are building lots of models you might find it worthwhile to buy some auditing software specifically to run over them. Excel’s own auditing tools improved greatly over the period I started having to look at them to the time I retired from doing so.

        3. Well, not so silly.
          I took over a job that required a spreadsheet to be updated month by month. The answers were wrong. I could not follow what was going on until I discovered a hidden cell that contained a formula for calculating the date. It did not calculate correctly. Strangely enough there was a calendar on the office wall. I still cannot work out why anyone would put in such a formula and then conceal it, although I am aware that there are people who vainly show off proficiency by including all sorts of loops and connections that are unnecessary.

    4. You saw some of mine, then.
      :-((
      But I agree. Full of errors, and very difficult to verify.

    5. More to the point, Excel isn’t designed for handling large amounts of data.

      Another mess that could have been avoided, just like the Ferguson C code one, if the muppets in government had thought of asking the people they trust to justify their methods!

      1. I think we’re in the mess we’re in precisely because the government did ask people they trusted (to give the right answers), rather than those who were impartial and knew what they were doing.

      1. A friend used to breed Poms. High upkeep at this time of year – she used to describe them as “mud sponges” – because they are certainly not wimpish about being out and about – but they all need to be bathed at the end of a walk.

          1. But The EU is thinking of re-introducing them and letting them range freely along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

      2. My Irish Wolfhound was crossed with a GSD, so a bit smaller, but one heck of a dog. Very bright, but laid back. He was the dog of a lifetime.

      3. After a terrible week I spent all weekend cuddling Mongo. Normally it’s a bit ‘change ends’ while we’re sick of each other with me being home all the time but I don’t think he minded. He is currently asleep on the couch and taking up all three seats with his head on the war queen’s lap.

        1. Sorry to hear you’ve had a terrible week. Cuddling a dog is a great comfort. Mine is not well at the moment; he was terribly lame this evening (although he went for a walk in the early afternoon and was fine) and even turned his nose up at some corned beef, which is extremely worrying. He did stir and want to come up to his bed just now, so I’ve settled him down and he’s eaten some biscuits, but it’s an anxious time, given his age. It looks as though I shan’t have to spend the night downstairs with him, but if he’s not better tomorrow, I shall have to ring up the vet and hope they can work their magic again (this will be his third potentially life-threatening experience in about eighteen months).

  41. Good Moaning; fully justified I think.
    Re: Sainsbury being woke. A couple of emails from chum who works there.

    “Yup, it’s all true. Bet you cannot wait to feel so much safer shopping at Sainsbury’s instead of those other horrible non inclusive and un-woke stores. Sadly one of my managers is in charge of it at Stanway. So far a common reaction is Give me Strength followed by polite indifference.”

    “To show our inclusiveness they want us to write on a board our background. It’s all anonymous so mine said “Born East Ham one stop from Barking.” Let’s see how long that lasts. Desperately wanted to write “In the 18th C family village in Cornwall was raided by Berbers. The villagers were taken and enslaved in North Africa. Relative escaped 10 years later returning via Sicily with a White Slave woman who he later married.” But even I baulked at this one.”

    As he comes from the East End, I have suggested a good Jewish sob story involving pogroms. But I suspect Jews are too intelligent and successful to count as victims.

    1. Take a look at London ‘Fare Dodgers’ next time it’s on the menu on TV. Lots of suntans.

    3. Happy to (continue to) follow Sainsbury’s exhortation ‘Anyone who does not want to shop
      with an inclusive retailer is welcome to shop elsewhere.’

    4. Hopefully, having drawn attention to their wokefulness, Sainsbury’s wil be great beneficiaries of and donors to the next lot of BLM rioters and looters.

      1. They had a banner announcing their wokeness for LBGT month a couple of years ago at our local store. The manager put it just at a point at the car park exit where nobody would notice it – point well made with subtlety. There is no need for anyone to get affirmation of their sexuality along with the groceries, I would have thought.

      2. I had to get some provisions today. I could have gone to Sainsbury’s but choose not to. They have lost my custom for the foreseeable. Go Woke – Get Stuffed!

    5. Is there nothing ‘exclusive’ at Sainsbury’s? That used to be a selling byword for quality didn’t it?

      1. “In the eighteenth century, my family were successful slave traders. Ten years ago, I arrived in Britain from Africa in the back of a lorry and claimed asylum.”

  42. Clive Jordan writes that electric scooters should be allowed on pavements and roads but with different speed limits.
    Clive – if you’ve never been called an ignorant arsehole before (unlikely) allow me be the first

    1. Join the campaign for drain grills and pavement lips. Dragrip

      It’s like Camra for beer, but to improve townscrapes (sic)

        1. If this goes ahead, a mandatory minimum £1,000 fine for hitting and injuring a pedestrian plus compensation paid for any injury would be a start.

          I’m afraid that I go all Jill Backson over these things, they are very dangerous and much easier to fall off than a bicycle, I can envisage many accidents where the rider hits a hole or a bump and falls straight under the wheels of a car, bus or lorry.

          1. That reminds me, what happened to the EU originated idea of making drivers responsible for compensation in accidents involving cyclists, irrespective of who was to blame?

          3. A Scottish cycling group started a petition back in 2013. As of June this year it is still running and, as yet, no action has been taken.

            There has been some muttering in England and Wales, but no changes there either up to now.

          5. Addendum.

            It applies now in all EU countries with the exception of Ireland, Malta, Romania and Cyprus – but it is not subject to any EU regulation or directive and is entirely a matter for the individual countries. Leaving the EU won’t alter the pressure – because it only comes from pressure groups anyway.

          6. It is used in the Netherlands and, I think, Denmark, where there have been many more cyclists for many years. But it’s not entirely “irrespective of who was to blame”. The onus, however, is on the driver to demonstrate that the cyclist was breaking the law or behaving recklessly. Dashcams are useful for this purpose, as are witnesses. If the cyclist is shown to be at fault – there is no compensation from the driver but the cyclist will be presumed innocent unless there is proof of fault.

            My Dutch friends say it works fine, partly because most drivers in these countries are also cyclists and partly because cyclists are, in the main, prepared to call out their fellow cyclists in cases of really bad behaviour.

          7. I doubt very much if as all cyclists won’t have, the scooter riders will not have any form of public liability insurance.

          9. The best thing would be for everyone to have an electric scooter and for all cars to be banned (all except mine of course)

    4. Those are the current rules for mobility scooters. Up to 8mph on the road but only 4mph on the pavement. I don’t know how well it works in crowded places – it’s OK in a small village with only a couple of the things in the neighbourhood.

    2. “However, we have to be careful to not get stuck looking for a second Earth because there could be planets that might be more suitable for life than ours.”
      Probably looking for atmospheres with less CO₂.

  44. This might help Bill.

    Weekend difficulties with Disqus on Chrome: solved. On Friday evening I had turned off ‘Allow all cookies’ because of temporary problems with intrusive adverts on another website. Turned it back on this morning and all appears normal: automatic login and media displayed.

    1. Thank you, Mr Gricer!

      I did just that – and – apart from having to re-log in to various things – all is working normally (famous last words…)

  45. Top comment BTL@DTletters

    John Kirby
    5 Oct 2020 3:04AM

    There is nothing wrong in NOT wanting to live in a multicultural society. If preferring to live amongst your own race and
    culture is racist then most people are racists, but that does not mean they are full of race hatred.

    It is about time we should be able to say this in public without being taken before some sort of racial inquisition

    Would the BBC/Hampstead/Islington white leftie elite please take note

    1. In Nigeria the Yoruba prefer not to live amongst the Ibo (i.e. Biafra) and neither the Ibos nor the Yoruba want to live in the Hausa north. There are plenty of other sub-divisions within those broad tribal and religious groupings.

        1. Did you know there are about 3,000 African tribes, speaking more than 2,000 different languages… and there are even more outside of the London area… and none of them get on with their neighbours either.

          1. It doesn’t surprise me. I used to be up to conversational level in Swahili, but over the years through lack of practice, it’s almost gone.

  46. Friends of mine were married in Oxford on Saturday. Very tight guest list and i didn’t make the final 15. Not surprising really. They have a big family.
    This was my gift to them..Lalique crystal with dove motif. The wrapping paper caused an outburst of laughter. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4a82caec1653b6974efa8fb86686cc780d8f0263bf481cd58ae03866a53656ff.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ab8258e914f4a367c62b526b4fa15f3f9874d380527c356f423b6d9288d7d574.jpg

        1. We went to the Lalique museum in Alsace this year. It was wonderful – he produced a stream of marvellous designs from the late nineteenth century through to the 1920s. It is reminiscent of his later designs. He really was a genius.

          1. How nice of you to say so.

            Emma completed her final Law exams last year. Craig’s family come from Holland. They are all a bit weird but very friendly.

            And guess what? They always make a bee line for me at a party because they find me outrageously funny. Can’t think why…

          3. It can decide what sort of dish it wants to be. Fruit bowl, Punch or Trifle. See how modern i am…

        1. My neigbour who is the brides stepfather told me today that he had never heard Craig (the groom) laugh so much. He said he was almost afraid to open the parcel.

  47. Re dental visit this morning.
    After having temperature taken and instructed to wash hands with sanitizer for 20 seconds I was shown to a seat. Ten minutes later I saw the dentist who took an X-ray of my aching tooth which had kept me awake at 3am. Infection of a molar required a filling which was not permitted due to Covid19……but an extraction was ok!
    I left PDQ with a prescription for a course of antibiotics…..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1844af3770cde265874fd0c378bbb733bddaa68f9b13daaa6560c7e270737160.jpg

    1. Quite right. Is it an upper tooth or lower? Either way it sounds like a root canal job, rather than a simple filling.

        1. An extraction, filling or RCT all come under Band 2 NHS, so about £62, that would include the x-ray you had taken. You’d be very lucky to get an RCT done on the Health Service – could be up to £500 privately. No discount for OAPs. I used to pay 50% of private fees, because I’m ‘in the club’.

          How much will I pay for NHS dental treatment? – NHSwww.nhs.uk › Common health questions › Dental health
          Band 1: £22.70. Covers an examination, diagnosis and advice. Band 2: £62.10. Covers all treatment included in Band 1, plus additional treatment, such as fillings, root canal treatment and removing teeth (extractions). Band 3: £269.30.

          1. Thanks peddy,

            The dentist didn’t offer me a filling only another app. for an extraction!
            Fillings not allowed due to Covid….???

            I’ll change my dentist!

          2. Good move. Many dentists don’t like getting involved with RCT, an extraction is quick & easy.

          6. But examination, diagnosis and advice does come free for the over 60s – at least it does here in Wales.

          1. Had my broken tooth pulled, not fixed. They can, apparently, fit an implant later if I want (NO I ABSOLUTELY DON’T WANT PEOPLE NAILING THINGS INTO MY HEAD!)

          2. Implants – apart from damage to your bank balance – aren’t really a problem.
            And once they’re in, you really do forget about them.

    2. My sympathies. I have an appointment tomorrow at 9am. Having an extraction on 23rd October but have sore gums lower left and an abscess that keeps on bursting, not pleasant. All this private as their NHS list is full (?). Dentist sent me to see root canal specialist but he said too little to work with and said extraction would be better. He doesn’t do implants etc so an honest answer I think. Have had metronidazole twice in last 6 months. Mine is bottom left next to wisdom tooth. Going to cost about £150 for the extraction plus tomorrow’s visit plus any medicine. In other words an arm and a leg and eventually a tooth.

      1. I was recently quoted £3000 for one implant from Wessex Dental. Solihull Dental and Implant clinic will do a full fixed arch for £9000.

        Depends how many spaces you have.

        Hot salty water gargles for you !

      2. Good luck tomorrow.
        £150 for an extraction seems reasonable for a private practise.
        NHS isn’t cheap….I paid £200 for a check and a filling!

        2. Are you saying you paid £200 for an exam & filling on the NHS. If so, you were robbed & you should report the dentist to the NHS authorities.

    3. An extraction is the last resort. My Dentist won’t do it unless there is no other choice.

      Hope you feel better soon. No alcohol while on those anti-bio’s. 🙁

        2. You can have a sherry or 2 if you want. The only antibiotic which clashes with alcohol is metronidazole & even then you could have a glass or 2. Any more may make you vomit.

          1. That may be the only antibiotic which officially clashes with alcohol – but for quite a few people antibiotics (of any sort) and booze are an uncomfortable mixture. Antibiotics are strongly inclined to make me feel pretty queasy … without adding alcohol. No nasty allergic reactions, or anything dramatic – just low grade nausea. I expect that I’m in a pretty small minority, but I do know several other people who say that antibiotics and booze make them feel worse rather than better.

          2. Second Son has only ever had one course of antibiotics or any othr pill in his almost 20 years – big problem, swallowing pills if you never practised… Man’s got the immune system of a goat. 🙂

          3. Lucky lad. Let’s hope it stays that way.

            Goats are often quite delicate creatures. They don’t like being out in the rain and despite their not entirely undeserved reputation for eating anything – they are very picky about their regular meals. Like sheep they have a reputation for “waking up dead” for no apparent reason…

          4. It’s Penicillin ….
            When I injured my Achilles tendon I was prescribed Capreomycin!!!

            Never again…. I felt giddy and nauseous, i thought i was dying!
            BThomas had similar effects I believe…bluddy poison.

          5. I didn’t know that you and he had met. Sounds like you came off worse for the encounter……

          6. I didn’t know that you and he had met. Sounds like you came off worse for the encounter……

        1. Not really. They make Teacher’s just up the road from where I grew up. The distillers grains are fine for the cattle – but the you’d be better off drinking paint stripper.

          3. I keep a low flyer in the house for making toddy (it’s a bit of a waste to put honey and cloves in a malt).

            Started to drink my father’s malt when I was 16 (he was pouring, I wasn’t pinching it) and I usually have one in the house; but in truth I drink very little.

          4. As a matte of fact, I can’t remember when I last had a whisky; I’ve somewhat lost the taste for it. I have a G&T or a “Brenda” with the 6 pm News & that’s about it.

          5. Unless it has been left in a darkened kilner jar with damsons for at least six months I have an intense dislike of gin (it’s the smell of it that gets to me) – actually getting the gin and damsons into the same jar requires having all the kitchen windows – and the back door – wide open, but I do like the result.

            That said I don’t think I’ve had a single alcoholic drink for 12 months (the last time I was drinking Dad’s whisky…).

          6. …or left in a Kilner jar in a dark cupboard – that’s where I keep mine. I still have a couple of jars from over 5 years ago.

            I love garlic. I like the smell & the taste. 20 years ago in Germany, I was invited to friends on Boxing Day for supper, when I consumed a whole jar of pickled garlic, not knowing that the American couple who were driving us from Düsseldorf to Dresden the next day were “allergic” to garlic. What a performance the next morning! It took over an hour before either would even sit in the car, then we had to drive the first 30 km with all the windows open. In Dec!

          7. My kitchen is too small for the numbers of things which are kept in it. So the kilner jars often end up sitting at the back of the counter with 2 or 3 layers of old bath-towel covering them. Even if I have room in a cupboard I don’t hide them away until the end of the 30 days of “shake daily” – or they might be forgotten.

            I haven’t made any for 5 or 6 years now – the last two jars still have the fruit in them – and it will almost certainly be more intoxicating than the liquor.

            One of my sinful treats is a jar of big queen olives – stuffed with cloves of garlic ( don’t usually eat the whole jar at once, but once opened they do begin to deteriorate). But they are either eaten when I’m alone or with other garlic loving friends.

            If you were driven at normal German motorway speeds I wonder that you were still in the car after 30km if all the windows were open.

          8. If I had enough money, I would have a bungalow designed & built in which the kitchen-living room would be the biggest room in the house.

          9. Oh, I’ve built lots of dream-castles over the years. And occasionally watched other people trying to build them on Grand Designs.

            One of those big kitchen living rooms with space for a dining-table to seat 10 or a dozen and big picture windows out onto a garden – a big walk-in pantry with room for at least 500 litres of freezer space too – and just for fun a half-decent wine cellar to boot.

            If you’re going to dream – you might as well dream big – especially when you’re being harassed by the ill-mannered abuser I’m ashamed to have to admit is a fellow Scot on today’s forum.

          10. Out of the blue my father gave me an assortment of cheap whiskies – Bell’s, B & W, Teachers, etc., for ‘people I might have to entertain who aren’t necessarily friends’.

          11. I’m afraid that I’m a bit more brutal than your father… if people are not friends I just don’t entertain them.

            My home is very much my retreat – I don’t let anyone in who isn’t welcome.

          12. Having bought a decent single malt for my late father (after the shop called me up to confirm I really wanted 12 of them, at painful cost.

            In fairness, it was a very good drop. Not sure it was worth £200 a finger though!

  51. Afternoon, all. Hissing down here, so I can’t get out into the garden and I have a Parish Council zoom meeting later, so I’ve looked in earlier than usual.

    1. Good evening, Conwy. I would have been here to greet you, but, unexpectedly, the chap wot does our tree work suddenly turned up – so the last hour was spent clearing tree debris. It is astonishing just how much stuff come come from what looks like a small branch!

      1. Tell me about it. I had three lorry loads of branches, prunings and tree trunks removed a few weeks ago and the other day I did some more trimming. Now I have at least another lorry load (and both my green bins are full).

  52. COVID Model 4.1 (with herd immunity column)

    I formulated this model with a the UK population of 67 million and assume that those infected lose their virus free status but gain COVID immunity. As obers has commented R can only be 1.0 or greater and the rate of infection is highly sensitive to even very small changes in R above 1.0

    This means the best that can done with any virus fighting measures is to halt spread of the virus with a permanent complete lockdown and clearly that is not tenable. After any lockdown it just carries on where it left off.

    Ironically my model shows that the faster the virus spreads in the community the faster that survivors will be able to continue living with it.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b3825541d729bfb5e0912b40d389dbffbae6fb875540cf3ea1b8a2d7393ee59a.jpg

    My model shows that 50% herd immunity would be achieved in the UK after six months with R=1.1 and no virus intervention measures.

    1. One mistake was to brand that concept as ‘herd immunity’. The word ‘herd’ has overtones of cattle/animals/wealthy farmers. I prefer ‘collective immunity’ or even ‘community immunity’. Our elite rulers oft refer to ‘the community’, so it would be apt.

      1. It’s a term commonly used in the medical world as a measure of critical population level of immunity.
        Doctors probably criticise the public use of chronic which to them it means long term.

    2. R can be less than 1! For example, if everyone stayed away from each other it would reach zero.

  53. https://youtu.be/ZWPO5bKHJLY
    Viewers watching Nicola Sturgeon’s daily Corona briefing noticed she slipped up a couple of times and accidentally rebranding her former colleague Margaret Ferrier. Margaret Covid, of course, being the 21st century’s answer to Typhoid Mary…

    1. Who made those laws, by what authority, and to whom are they accountable? I think we should be told.

      1. I reckon that Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger and Heisenberg would have great difficulty communicating amongst themselves – let alone explaining ‘those laws’ to you, Joseph …

  56. Female farmer is sexually assaulted and strangled to death while another rural worker is tortured and murdered in latest horrific attacks on South Africa’s white farmers. % October 2020.

    A female farmer has been sexually assaulted and strangled to death while another rural worker has been tortured and murdered in the latest attacks on South Africa’s white farmers.

    Divorcee Chantel Kershaw, 44, was ambushed by two armed black men while working her land in Delmas east of Johannesburg on Wednesday.
    Kershaw’s underwear was ripped off and stuffed into her mouth and she was strangled to death inside her garage.

    These poor people. There’s not going to be any White Lives Matter to come to their aid! Another five years and it will be the same here!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8806781/Female-farmer-strangled-death-worker-tortured-murdered-South-Africa.html

    1. Poor lass, that’s awful.
      The whites are going to have to get tooled up and pack heat. However unpleasant a pistol in the waistband might be, better than that fate.

      1. I shared an office with a fellow accountant, a small South African lady heading towards retirement. She told me about her house in South Africa and her plans for hr retirement. She was simply waiting for her husband to retire and they would both move to SA. She was aware that that SA was troubled. She said that whenever she left the house she carried a revolver in her handbag.

        1. I politicians at the time knew this would happen, they are responsible for this, it is their legacy.

          1. Eight or nine years ago, I went to an event where Tony Benn was talking. He was asked lots of questions by his sycophants but one lady had obviously managed to get past his minders and asked him if he ever regretted his enthusiasm and support for Mugabe. Cutting through his waffle and evasion, the answer was “No”, even though he acknowledged that Mugabe had not turned out well. It was very clear that, to Tony Benn, the only important fact was that Mubage was black, which transcended everything else. Olympic standard, ocean-going, high-definition hypocrisy!

    3. It gets to the point that I hope that all white farmers leave and the black population starves and starts to kill and eat the Black politicians.

      1. Beats me why any whites would willing stay there. Oh wait, the Home Office won’t give them asylum…

          1. Straightforward folk, yer Boer. Almost Yorkshiremen/women. Tell it like it is. Kick your arse when it needs it. What’s not to like?

          2. What’s not to like… mmmm, how about everything. The only one I ever had the dire misfortune to work with was a thoroughly nasty piece of inhumanity.

            Snobbish, treated everyone like dirt, thought he was God’s gift to women (he wasn’t) and maltreated the cows. If I never have to meet another I’ll be very happy. It was a major relief when one of the maltreated cows broke his nose for him and he “retired hurt” and stayed away.

            Of course I’m sure that, just like any other folk, they come in good, bad and indifferent – but it puts you off to start with a dire example.

          3. The last Boer I worked with was ex SA SAS, now a Canadian. Great bloke, technically good, respected other opinions, occasional outbreaks of loud temper when receiiving bullpoo. Back in Canada now, we keep in touch.

          4. Yes, I’m sure lots of them are fine, you’re not the only person to say so. I’ve got Dutch friends and they go back to the same roots. Just a bad first experience – and however reasonable you try to be – memory tends to trump reason.

          6. I’m quite certain that he’s forgotten all about me. I was an insignificant 19 year old agricultural student, far beneath his notice (or at least he thought so).

            I might have ignored his sexual harassment and his bad manners – but not beating up the cows…

          7. Would have replied sooner but I’ve only just seen your post. So you were sexually harassed by a Boer? Is that a typo …. did you mean a boar?

            I only ask because you mentioned some time ago that you’d been sexually harassed by a pigman, although you never said where the alleged incident took place …… the Island of Dr. Moreau, perhaps?

      2. The pleb population will suffer famine and their ‘leaders’ will carry on in their luxurious lifestyles courtesy of bribes from the Chinese. The Chinese are presently busily pillaging the rare earths, rare metals, diamonds and rhino horn and elephant tusk for their primitive remedies (Viagra is available and that apparently works) and the relatively small change of international aid.

        1. I suspect so, but there will come a point when those plebs will rise up.

          It isn’t like Europe, there people will go completely crazy at some point.

      3. Unfortunately, this will just lead to charity and international aid from the British tax payer.

      1. As Morgan Freeman said ‘stop doing it’. Stop identifying being black as a label. Be a man. Just be a bloody man and ignore the colour, the religion the creed, the shoe size. Just be a blasted man. Have some character of your own without falling on being identified by an irrelevant characteristic.

    7. I place no great claim that somehow white people are civilised paragons – gawd knows we’ve done some god awful things – but when I’m out with my chums and we see a woman on her own, we don’t think, ooh, I’ll rape and kill her. Grief, the last time I booted them out to get a heavily pregnant woman home. None of us batted an eyelid. It was the right thing to do.

      As for laying a finger on her besides helping her into the motor – unthinkable.

  57. That’s me for the day. A daring drive to Narridge for the MR to have her teeth looked at. I had a Haircut. Then the tree bloke turned up out of the blue to sort out the half fallen branch. Lots of debris clearing tomorrow plus log storing.

    Ready for a well earned drink. And a glance at the crossword….

    A demain

  59. OK, I give up.

    What’s on the TV that is stopping people posting during the normal “rush hour”?

      1. Possibly, I noticed that when I scrolled down that all sorts of posts had appeared but no “comments below”

          3. Your liver will tell you if you’ve had too much. Sadly, by the time it does, it may be to late for moderation.

            Yes, I know I’m a spoilsport, but I’ve also known a couple of people when they were in the later stages of alcohol induced liver disease… sort of walking cautionary tales. :-((

  60. Did anyone else notice the slogan being used by the Cons in their online conference? “Build Back Better”

    Yes, they are using the sinister UN slogan for bringing down the West. Francis seems to in on it as well, as he lectured us on the evils of capitalism – the CCP must be very happy with him.

    3. I prefer the insurance company’s TV advertising slogan: “We won’t make a drama out of a crisis”.

    6. I prefer the insurance company’s TV advertising slogan: “We won’t make a drama out of a crisis”.

    7. Build back better?

      Daft and difficult to say. What does it mean? What will be built better? What are they going to change?

      What’s wrong with ‘Lower taxes, smaller government, direct democracy’? Oh, because that means *doing something*. The results are tangible. Build (build what?, with what)? Back? Go backward?

      It makes no sense.

      1. It’s the UN’s post corona slogan which is a thin cover over “World Government By Us And Death To The West!”

    1. Absolutely. I have thought this from the start. The long-term modus operandi of the psychopath. No conscience, no shame, no remorse. The end always justifies the means.

      2. I’m not sure a narcissist is a psychopath.

        A narcissist is a thing of pity, a small, frightened fundamentally broken person. An ex said I described her as a broken doll. She was. She desperately needed love and having the permanent fear of losing that love went after people incapable of it. What was done to them makes them what they are.

        A psychopath has no empathy whatsoever. They don’t really exist as people we would recognise at all.

        1. Then there are people like my ex who have a very high empathy with others, and use it to manipulate them. He could size up anyone and home in on their weak point within seconds.

        1. My mother wasn’t – not really. My father’s cruelty drove her into a deep depression, she had ECT and was never the same. She never came back to us as a person. The quacks at the hospital called it “pre-senility”. My father’s mental cruelty continued, supported by friends who liked him.

          Nobody in the Embassy (where my father was well-respected), or the other big cheeses in the community realised what a complete sh*t my charming father really was. We knew. Nobody to believe us.

          Gaslight exists, oh yes…

          1. Yep, very evidently.

            The frightening thing is that people don’t see the beatings, the insults, the mental abuse behind the charming facade.

          2. How tragic for you and the family, Hertslass and what a burden to have to bear. What goes on behind closed doors is so sad. Thoughts are with you.

          3. Thanks, Sue

            There is no family – just me and my brother. He is here at the moment, having been far, far more emotionally disturbed by my my late father’s actions, than I realised.

            We used to be very close – there was only my father, mother (adoptive), my brother and me. The rest of the family (of which there wasn’t much) was in Denmark. There is none left there now.

            When Mum died, the father lost no time in marrying a woman 27 years younger than he (an employee of his), with whom he had been having an affair for years. She was determined to get her feet under his table, and she did. She did everything she could to drive the only person we had in this country, away from us. When he died she inherited all of his, and through him our mother’s, estates.

            Don’t know why I’m writing all this but gaslight seems to embody the FEELING that one or two great liars can undermine everything that decency could expect. Especially if the one father is a charming personality.

          4. I am so sorry for you both. The facade behind which the gaslighter hides, becomes a barrier to the truth.

          5. Well survive Sue!
            I can’t be on here much at the moment, amd I don’t know why I bared so much tonight, but thank you all who said kind words, Night, night all! xxxxxxxxx

          6. That’s bally awful Hertslass.

            It took many years of therapy for me to realise the root cause of my woes. I’m glad you’ve been able to identify your father rather than to feel it is your fault. It isn’t, nor your brothers.

          7. It took some time, wib.

            It’s difficult to come to terms with the fact that someone you always looked up to was in fact a worthless sh*t.

    5. My first proper girlfriend started seeing some other bloke on the side. I saw them together and her scream was ‘You’re spying on me!”.

      Yep, another narcissist.

      Thankfully you start to get a clarion go off in your head when you recognise such people.

    6. I had come across this before, and at the time I thought there was a grain of truth in it.
      Now?
      I’m completely convinced!

  64. Hello dear Nottlers!

    Another brief visit (as unfortunately they are at the moment).

    Saw this through a link to the Mail, about Laurence Fox and some hysterical twits who can’t seem to take what they dish out:

    “The row comes after the actor, who recently announced he was launching his own political party to ‘reclaim British values’, denounced the supermarket on Twitter.

    He said: ‘Dear Sainsbury’s. I won’t be shopping in your supermarket ever again whilst you promote racial segregation and discrimination. I sincerely hope others join me. RT’

    It came in the wake of Sainsbury’s announcing they would be marking Black History Month, an annual celebration of achievements of the black community, recognising the central role black people have played in history.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8807357/Stonewall-charity-boss-sues-Lawrence-Fox-defamation-actor-calledhim-paedophile.html?ito=push-notification&ci=38503&si=17762752

    What central role in history is that, then? I must have missed something during my history degree,

    1. They are good at jazz, and running.
      Otherwise, fcuking everything up and making a disaster. Absolutely world class at that.

      1. Talking of running I remember Michael Johnson, on television, saying that the Olympic 100 metres final was a bit like a Friday night in Haarlem, a gun goes off and 8 black men run like bats out of hell.

        2. I could picture him saying that, but I suspect it’s an apocryphal tale.

          I think that he is the best commentator on athletics by a country mile.

          Nobody else gets close.

    3. Raping, pillaging, slavery, stabbing, mass murders and genocide for starters. Oh, and the expropriation of the lands and properties of white folk.

        2. It’s when you look at the Rwandan genocide that you really, truly start to wonder what on earth is wrong with humanity.

    4. I made similar comments under ‘feedback’ on the Sainsburys website. Their woke agenda sucks, talk about climbing on a bandwagon.

  65. 324276+ up ticks,
    If this be the case then as soon as a major crime is commited by a foreign felon , tried & found guilty then root out & deport the family .

    UK Government Importing Asylum Seekers Directly from Greece Under ‘Family Reunification’

    1. It will be very interesting to see what can be called in evidence and how hard the Govt will fight, particularly with regard to refusing details of the information that they are using to justify the lockdowns.

      1. It will barely bother. Any and all evidence will be irrelevant. The state will withhold that upon which the decision is made and it’ll simply be a whitewash.

    2. The outcome is inevitable. The state will win.

      Citing emergency powers, health crisis and other ‘evidence’ withheld for reasons of national security or as they may embarrass serving members of the government.

  67. Prat on talkRADIO, as it styles itself, doesn’t know the difference between debt and deficit. And an American he was interviewing asserted that the last sitting president not to serve a second term was Carter (no he wasn’t).

    1. Probably many of them have had the call from Open Society which is only just down the road and bursting with Soros money…………..

      ”We leverage policy, legislation and political influence and build strong relationships with officials, politicians, NGOs and other actors”.

      1. I thought they got the membership form with all the benefits outlined along with their ermine robes!

    2. That bloody Alf Dubbs again, likening the kinder transport to the entirely different invasion we continue to experience.

      It might have been better had we not bothered facilitating Alf Dubbs’ entry into our country for all of the damage he has wrought with his blindly ignorant interference in our immigration policy.

      Since when were ‘children’ equipped with designer clothes and trainers, top of the range mobile phones, stubble and full beards and brass necks.

        1. If it looks like an idiot, spouts nonsense like an idiot then it surely is an idiot. How on earth did this prat manage to secure a place in the Lords? The man is both blind to reality and certifiable.

        2. Sigh. “Anti-semitic” accusation again. It’s about time that some people realised that just because a particularly nasty piece of work happens to be Jewish, does not make criticism of that person anti-semitic.

          Those who make such claims run the risk of alienating people generally.

      2. There was a Round Robin letter in today’s Telegraph suggesting that “forcing” students to invest in a passport would drastically reduce the number of school exchange visits, etc. and cost our country billions in income. And yet these “poor impoverished students” can still afford mobile phones and all the other paraphernalia of modern technology.

        1. Always finding problems, never suggesting solutions. No wonder nothing ever gets done if that is all that they can do.
          Is buying a passport such a hassle? If they wanted to go to Egypt or turkey for their sun bathing hols, getting a passport would not be an issue for the poor mites..

        2. The youth of today are gifted these things by their parents. My parents were as poor as church mice and I was one of five children. I was the only sibling with a wish to escape deprivation. I did exhausting early morning and evening paper rounds, worked at weekends in Woolworths and Victoria Wine at Xmas.

          I spent my evenings doing homework whilst the rest of my family were watching either Peyton Place or else Hughie Green on the Ferranti television, valves and all.

          I obtained a first degree and post graduate Diploma at two universities and qualified as a chartered architect. I certainly experienced severe hardship along the way.

          Life since qualification has been both stressful and oftentimes rewarding but never in a financial sense. I have seen the credit and fees charged for my work gobbled up by non-combatant senior partners and a variety of over-promoted interlopers.

          1. You are right when you say “The youth of today are gifted these things by their parents”. I was implying that their parents could therefore afford to pay for them to get themselves a passport. My father bought my first one for me when I was 7 years old.

          3. Our policy has been to try and give our children all the things our parents gave us such as passports, driving lessons, university fees and living allowances so they could go into the world well educated and debt free as we did, We also encouraged them to get vac jobs and be as self-sufficient as possible.

      2. A nice rash goes well with penicillin too. Starts around my neck and shoulders and takes six months to work it’s way down and disappear off my toes. Doesn’t itch though.

        3. I recall from my days as a pharmaceutical executive – and frequent guinea pig – the symptoms you describe were called ‘ampicillin rash’ associated with Penbritin.

    3. I left dents in the arms of the dentists chair. The poor fellow suggested I relax, and gave me advice on sensitive teeth and suggested that next time we don’t use the machine thingy.

  72. So Trump apparently is going back to the White House and is twittering that people should not let covid rule their lives. With so many white house staff catching the bug, is the white house the place for Trump at the moment?

    Off to look at CNN, they must be apoplectic

    1. Easy to say “don’t let” when you can take your high class, very expensive, doctors home with you – and have servants to run round after you too.

      Not quite an ordinary situation is it.

      1. It makes me wonder how ill they thought that he was if they moved him to hospital from the White House with its own medical centre.

        1. One of his doctors was very angry about his motorcade stunt yesterday; I strongly suspect that he has left hospital without their approval. It’s the sort of thing that he would be very capable of doing.

          Whilst you’re here, perhaps you’d take a look at DM’s latest personal attack. I have flagged it.

    1. I’m afraid to say that when I read a story about a student dying of a “bad” illegal drug today, I thought exactly the same thing.

      Kids’ education teaches them that the world is just fun, fun, fun and defeating nasty racists, but reality is that some instinct of self-preservation is needed to keep one safe.

  75. Has anyone ever trusted the government to organise effective computer technology in its applications in particular where the NHS and PHE are involved. Add the idiots Matt Hancock, aka Goebbels, and Dido Harris, aka Eva Braun, to the mix and you have an unfolding disaster.

    I should add that any programme involving Bill Gates’ software, aka The Fuhrer, is inevitably unfit for any purpose other than small domestic computing.

    Putting aside these obvious realities I should also add that the whole Covid ‘pandemic’ is a charade. The figures for actual deaths, albeit dishonestly inflated, are still minuscule by comparison with the total population.

    The Covid tests are completely unreliable and we might as well pluck numbers from the air as noted to suit Matt Hancocks transparently obvious vaccine agenda.

    I believe Hancock and his vaccine promoting chums (who stand to make billions) should be investigated, prosecuted for their crimes and brought to trial.

      2. Using Excel as the data store for information that the government is using to make major decisions seems to be up there in the top ten most stupid things list.

        Do they also have copies of the spreadsheet that they use for reporting? A disaster waiting to happen.

          1. We used to come across such disorganized offices many years ago but I would have thought that the practice would have been stamped out by now.

            I wonder if they have viable backups of the data?

    3. I have disliked Dido Harding for at least thirty years, but calling her Eva Braun is unfair.

        1. Don’t want to drag the discussion into too heavy ground, but knowing DH, I can’t call her a nazi. She isn’t, she’s just extremely annoying.

        1. In Dido’s case her promotions were in part the result of a friendship with David Cameron.

          I would have thought that her record at Talk Talk where, as a result of serious IT failures, tens of thousands of her subscribers had their personal details stolen, should have precluded her from occupying any government office.

          I suppose Dido represents just another person gifted a lucrative government appointment based on a history of repeated failure.

          1. She was one of those people at Oxford with enormous self-belief, which sort of persuaded everyone around her that she was destined for great things. She joined McKinseys (joke) straight from Oxford, along with Jeremy Hunt if I remember rightly. They both came from similar backgrounds with high achieving parents or grandparents and oodles of money and confidence.
            There was no excuse for the TalkTalk thing – she just didn’t bother with the details – and this episode shows that she learned nothing from that. Nobody who wants to run a company should be as technically illiterate and unsuspicious as these clowns.

          2. Her father was at some point the most senior officer in the British Army. I would love to know what he would think of his privileged spoilt child.

          3. We used to have Talk Talk. We left, not because of the IT scandal, but because the whole outfit was breathtakingly poor in all respects.

            As for the nightmare of customer “service” when things went wrong (which they did with monotonous regularity) – try speaking to someone in the Indian sub-continent (or S. Africa, for a while) who runs through a list of questions and so-called solutions, and when that is done, starts at the beginning of the list again. Meanwhile apparently not even thinking about the actual problem that I contacted them about..

        2. Her husband is a Tory MP.

          She is married to him, whoever the wretch is, but chooses to use her maiden name. Just another illustration of some inherited or innate propensity for deception I suppose.

        3. I doubt Eva Braun would have had much choice actually, even if she had wanted to leave him. Would you tell Adolf Hitler that it wasn’t him, it’s you, knowing there’s a handy concentration camp at the end of the road?

          1. At that stage of the war, I suspect that she could have just melted away, with many others.

          2. She was too well known, surely? And probably had too many enemies?
            I was fascinated to read the account by Hitler’s food taster, of fleeing Berlin with the help of a soldier, just before the Red Army arrived. Would have been harder for EB, I would have thought.
            Terrible times.

  76. Eeuw.
    Specs as dirty as if they have been hung under the back end of a cow… better go & wash them. Might see something if I do.

    1. When I worked at the airport, one of the female officers in my team would inspect the condition of my specs each time I turned up for work and admonish me if they were dirty (which they usually were). She would remove them and give them a good clean before returning them to me with a rejoinder to keep them clean!

    1. So early to bed, Peddy? Must be a really good bedtime book you are reading! Good night and sleep well.

    1. Morning Geoff. Did you have any further thoughts about backup arrangements in the event of you becoming temporarily incapacitated?

      1. Or permanently, since I’m losing the will to live? Seriously though, I can prolly share the access to nttl.blog. Would you like to be added to the Moderator list? I’m thinking of granting all the Mods access to the WordPress site…

        1. Geoff. 2020 should have been a year of EUphoria – freedom from the EU bureaucrats and their insatiable appetite to control. Instead we end up with Witless and co preventing normal life in spades so I along with Nottlers do understand where you are coming from.
          Thank you for kindly offering to add me to the Moderator list. Because of the commitments I’m facing over the coming 6-9 months, my time on line is going to be significantly curtailed, so in all fairness I have to say not just yet.
          With regards to your proposal to give Mods access to the WP site would a good first step be to give the most senior Mod the power as your deputy and to nominate a successor deputy for when as Shakespeare put it so eloquently we: “shuffle off this mortal coil….”

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